this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2025
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I'd say even globally we're better off when it comes to amount of physical labour since the number of people being able to survive on physical labour of others has ballooned. Most of the world I'd say are service economies, people do office jobs instead of physical labour. Even fields such as construction are to large degree mechanized in many industrialized countries, same for agriculture, many factories have robots doing the actual physical activity and humans are more in supervisory role and so on.
Office work might be stressful and soul crushing, but it's not quite the same as actual demanding physical labour.
Sure, like I said I just think its notable that we used the increased productivity to proportionally increase the size of the non-laborer population rather than reduce the per-laborer workload.
Like, to use an analogy, you know how in 'The Jetsons' George Jetson goes to work every day, pushes a single button, then takes a nap? I know that sketch wasn't ever meant to be taken seriously, it's just a joke, but think about how its implied that every family has a breadwinner husband like George with a similar job.
I feel as if, if it were like the real world, there would be a single guy frantically pressing buttons for 8 hours a day while about a billion people are supported by his effort. Though, granted, that's a definite improvement over all of them having to work like that.